Love in a Very Small Space

Both presumptions are wrong, she suggests. "Especially in a small space, you need to divest yourself of everything that is not critical. That can mean tossing things. But it can also mean getting a storage space, or better yet, asking Mom and Dad if you can store things in their garage, or in your old room."

That idea worked for Brad Koons. When his parents moved from Arizona to a nearby suburb in Maryland, he persuaded them to let him keep his car and his copious outdoor gear at their house, rather than at the minuscule English basement he and his wife, Cynthia, share near Dupont Circle. Though it's a one-bedroom, their apartment appears to be smaller than the Hailes' studio. (They don't know how many square feet it is, and have never asked. The figure wasn't disclosed in the original "for lease" listing. Imagine that.)

But the Koonses -- he's a lawyer, she just received her graduate degree -- aren't complaining. "We think of the size of the apartment as the price of getting to have a completely walkable lifestyle," Cynthia says. "We really appreciate that we can walk to anything we need in the neighborhood. Brad can walk to work, and I can walk to school."

The Koonses eat on their futon, use their miniature dishwasher as a cabinet and keep pots and pans "under the sink, where normal people keep their cleansers," she says. Their bedroom can barely contain their full-size bed, much less the open shelving where they store clothes, books and CDs. As a quirky symbol of the couple's commitment to streamlining their lives, a unicycle leans against a wall in the vestibule; a bicycle wouldn't fit.

But their lifestyle may actually be good for their marriage. Cynthia says that living in a shoebox "encourages more communication. You're both sitting right there. There's no escape. If you have an argument, you're just going to have to talk through it and get over it. Every once in a while, one of us will go into the bedroom and shut the door, if we feel like we need some time alone. But for the most part, it forces us to battle it out until there's peace."

So far, they've managed to avoid the deadly third rail of living together in a tiny space: passive-aggressive "housecleaning" that results in the unauthorized removal of another's stuff.

The Hailes, alas, were not so lucky.

"My mom sent me a box with about $125 worth of cosmetics and vitamins in it," Jennifer says. "I was waiting to start my new beauty regimen until I finished my old supply. Well, because I hadn't opened the clearly marked box in four months, Jeremy decided that I must not want it badly. He trashed it and didn't tell me."

That, as it turns out, was the wrong thing to do.

"It was one of the rare moments of shouting at our place," she says. "I took the opportunity to remind him of everything he's thrown away without my permission. I insisted that he hand-deliver my mom a check, and admit -- and apologize for -- his disregard for property. But finally I caved, and have been forced to lie to my mom for months about the wonders of Susan Lucci's skin-care therapy."

Now that's true love, people.